Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

An American science fiction directed by J. A. Bayona, starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.
The island that Jurassic park was built on has become an erupting volcano. The heroes from the previous installment are hired, along with some military dudes, to go grab some dinosaurs before they're gone. Everyone goes back to this rich dude's house to tangle: heroes, rich people, military dudes and dinosaurs.
This is what happens when you make a big budget B movie. Clocking in at just over 2 hours, this is a bit longer than standard running time. I appreciated that for reasons that will come up later. The plot was a shambles. It was like some of the lowest budget film plots I've ever seen: full of holes and stuff is happening that doesn't make sense. The characters were literally regurgitated from the last film. The leading male and female roles were even in the same type of relationship. Owen's relationship with the dinosaurs is deepened and given back-story, but he is no further along with Claire. Dialogue and acting were extremely professional, this being a big budget film and all. I think that the granddaughter, Maisle did a great job of providing contrast to the super-dinosaur and I really liked seeing the rich, bald guys being afraid of that same monster. Sets and costumes were amazing. That's what money can buy. Camera-work was what I would expect from the series and from modern Hollywood in general. Editing was fast, but there were some times when showing off special effects overpowered close-ups and quick editing pace. Yeah, my image spoils the climax. What are you going to do about it? It was in the trailer that spoiled the whole film! Now we come to special effects: the whole reason for this film to exist. I went to the theater to see digital dinosaurs on the big screen. Unfortunately, it was not being shown in 3D where and when I went. Needless to say, I got what I wanted. If you watch this film to look at the cool dinosaurs, you may have as much fun as I did. If you are looking for a good movie by other standards, look somewhere else. Audio at the theater is a whole new story. I thought their setup was treble-heavy and didn't bring enough bass rumble. It was just a little short on mid-range as well. They don't use a normalizer, but I could hear characters whispering. Maybe if I turned my system up as loud as at the theater, I could hear whispering characters without a normalizer. IMDb lists a rating of 6.5/10 and Rotten Tomatoes lists 51% Tomatometer with 55% audience score for an average of 57% not even passing. I think people are expecting hobos to shit glitter here, flogging a dead horse. The series is 28 years old and was lucky to do blockbusters as long as it did. I liked watching this because I like B movies, series films, dinosaurs and digital effects. Also, it got me into an air conditioned theater and away from my parents for a few hours. If that is not your reason for watching this film, you may agree with everyone else and dislike it. I rate this adequate because it did it's job.

A Monster Calls (2016)

A Spanish American fantasy drama directed by J. A. Bayona, starring Sigourney Weaver, Toby Kebbell and Liam Neeson.
A boy's mother is dying from cancer, he is being bullied at school and doesn't want to go live with his grandmother. A giant tree monster that may be real, a dream, imagination or hallucination visits him to tell stories.
Besides the monster, this was sappy, lame and boring. The hour 40 duration seemed much longer because the scenes without the monster moved very slowly. The plots of the monster's short stories were much better than the "real world" plot of the whole film. The characters were actually not that bad. All of the dialogue was well written and the actors played their roles appropriately. My favorite set was the cemetery with the sinkhole from the boy's nightmare. Everything else was pretty mundane. The camera-work was professionally done and the editing was seamless. I can't say that I noticed any really good shots that stood out though. The special effects for the tree monster were what kept me from turning this off. It may be CG, but it was good CG. The animations for the monster's stories were also done quite well. Although CG as well, they had a bold style that I appreciated. The audio was all mixed well, but I think that the monster sounded too much like an Ent from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. I liked that the style was a little on the dark and gloomy side for the whole film. This won 23/50 awards that it was nominated for, made a gain of about 4 million dollars, has a 7.5/10 on IMDB and 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. I think that it got too much credit. I rate it tolerable because the monster and gloominess were the only positive aspects that I could see.